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Category Archives: Colomba

I recognise Piergiorgio Giorilli to be a true master of baking. I followed the recipe from Fables de Sucre. For me the first and second dough’s rose very quickly.

Being so soft and light, unfortunately when hanging this dove upside down, it tore open at the wing but other than that mishap this was a perfect colomba di pasqua. I let this mature for a week before slicing into. Of course it was delicious!

This is one very rich Colomba Pasquale (Easter Dove). The recipe comes from Italian master baker and Cresci co-author Achille Zoia. This was very challenging and I had some technical problems along the way but I just about managed to pull this off…

Achille’s formula calls for a small addition of yeast but I chose to leave this out because my sourdough is so very powerful! The first dough tripled on schedule at 12hrs. I also felt the recipe was a little lacking in salt, so I doubled it to 4 grams.

First dough tripled:

Mixing the second dough was problematic. I think I developed too much strength too early which made incorporating all the butter very tricky and I ended up with a slightly greasy dough that lacked extensibility which made shaping a night-mare as you can see… Shoddy shaping!

Glazed:

Inverted to cool overnight:

Finished and ready for wrapping. This will mature for a few days to develop its flavours.

Adapted recipe:

First dough: (26C for 12hrs)

63g Lievito Naturale (Italian sourdough)

200g ’00’ Flour

80g Water

75g Sugar

50g Egg Yolks

75g Butter

Second dough: (28C until tripled ~8hrs)

50g ’00’ Flour

50g Egg Yolks

38g Sugar

25g Honey

75g Butter

5g Cocoa Butter

4g Salt

Aroma Veneziana

Seeds from half a Vanilla pod

125g Candied Orange Peel

Total Ingredients:

Flour

100.0

292

Water

34.6

101

Sugar

38.7

113

Honey

8.6

25

Yolks

34.2

100

Fats

53.1

155

Fruit

42.8

125

Salt

1.4

4

%

grams

Glaze:

1g Maize flour

1g Rice flour

1g Cocoa powder

20g ground nuts. I used just almonds but really you should use a mix of, sweet and bitter almonds, hazelnuts and apricot kernels.

40g caster sugar

And enough egg white to make a paste, ~15g.

Once glazed I covered with whole almonds, nib sugar and then dusted generously with icing (powdered) sugar.